


I guess you're just what I needed

by gaps42



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: <--- it makes me so happy that this is a suggested tag aslkdgfh;gf, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Benny and Hopper are Good Dads, Depictions of mental illness and coping with trauma, Eleven | Jane Hopper Deserves Happiness, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Indulgent summer fic tbh, It is now, Jane is a traumatized foster kid, M/M, Magic: the Gathering - Freeform, i don't really know where i'm going with this but it's super important to me as an adopted kid???, is summer jobs au a thing?, just a lil bit of angst, there will probably be descriptions of past abuse in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaps42/pseuds/gaps42
Summary: [I don't mind you comin' hereAnd wastin' all my time, time'Cause when you're standin', oh so nearI kinda lose my mind, yeah]Jane is finally living the miracle of a boring, normal life at sixteen, and she couldn't ask for anything more, especially not the thrill of spending time with the prettiest girl she's ever seen. Especially when the girl seems to want nothing more than to spend time with her and introduce her to all of the things she's always felt like she was never meant to have. She already has what she needs to get through the overwhelming day.Jane is fine. It's fine.





	1. Chapter 1

_Nudge. Flip. Repeat._

The only indication, Jane is proud to say, if only to herself, that her whole being is sizzling like the grill she's hunched over, ears attuned pathetically to the conversation behind her that was probably loud enough for her to overhear without every other sound in the world fading away at the familiar shouted greeting, is her slightly-tensed shoulders. She can't even pretend in her own mind that she isn't greedily taking in every good-natured insult flying across the counter, but she sucks in too much air through her nose and forces Benny's voice to repeat those gentle instructions in her head anyway. She knows how to cook hamburgers without instruction by now – thanks to Benny, she'd known how to cook hamburgers before she'd even started this job – but focusing on simple, short tasks has gotten her through much more harrowing situations than this, not to mention her deep-rooted fear that she's going to set the whole stall on fire if she doesn't do her duty perfectly.

_There's no right way a perfect burger should come out. The great thing about cooking is even when you're making the same thing you come out with a different variation every time. Keeps folks coming back._

_Nudge. Flip. Repeat._

Jane exhales and flips a patty over, ears tuned keenly behind her.

”Eugh, you stink! Did you bathe in the grease trap, stalker?”

“I smell like I've been working a real job, like a man! Not all of us can sit on our asses and play card games all day.”

“Don't be jealous because I'm living the dream, loser. It's okay that I'm a better Magic player than you, we can't _all_ be this awesome.”

The corner of Jane's mouth twitches upwards, and she flips the patty on her spatula too quickly. The grease splattering her wrist doesn't sear nearly as hot as the loud, careless laugh behind her at whatever Lucas's retort had been.

_You got this. You know how I know? You've done it before._

“Laugh it up, because you just lost your insider information. Looks like you're stuck with being the creepy version of Dungeon Master.” Her voice is much closer than Jane is expecting, and it takes all of her considerable powers of concentration to not look up from her half-cooked hamburgers in a panic. _Nudge. Flip. Repeat_. “No, you're going to mock nerdy games you're going to pay for them like the rest of the fake geeks. Right, Jane?”

She knows it's coming, but her whole body still jerks like she'd stuck a finger in an electric socket when she hears her name in that voice. She carefully turns a patty over before she looks up, hoping against hope she doesn't have too much grease on her face this time, although if she does she could probably start cooking her hamburgers on her own cheeks from the heat coursing through her body at the other girl's presence. “Uh. Fake geek?”

Max grins at her. She's leaning on the swinging door beside the grill Jane is in front of, arms folded carelessly across the partition like she's not breaking at least twelve kitchen rules just by her red waterfall of hair tumbling over her shoulders, and Jane plunges so much more deeply in love with her that the air is squeezed from her lungs. “Yeah, like real nerds wouldn't call Magic: The Gathering a mere 'card game,'” she says, raising her voice pointedly even as she sneaks Jane a wink, and Jane has to look down at what her hands are doing quickly so that her patty doesn't end up on the ceiling. “Like you don't have a poster of Liliana on the ceiling above your bed.”

Dustin's wild, deafening laughter rings out from deeper within the kitchen, but Jane ducks her head with a blush. She's not sure if Max and Lucas are dating, but with comments like this it's hard for even her eternally-hopeful heart to think they aren't. Even if they weren't, it wouldn't make a difference; girls like Max don't date girls like Jane. They don't usually befriend girls like Jane, either, and even if it's only because she's forced to by proximity Jane is determined not to make her regret it. “Yeah, and would a fake geek have that?” Lucas's annoyed voice calls from the cash register, and Jane pokes a patty with her spatula and keeps her eyes on the fountain of grease bubbling from the meat.

“Dudes buy posters of Liliana without knowing who she is all the time,” Max retorts, turning her head towards Lucas, and as much as she adores Max's fiery red waves Jane resents them for a moment when they tumble over her cheeks at the movement and obscure her smile. “They see a hot, half-dressed cartoon woman and they don't need to know minor details, like literally _anything_ else about her.”

“Now who's a fake geek?” Dustin's incredulous voice booms from wherever he's hidden in the back of the kitchen. “MTG art is not _cartoons_.”

“Sorry, it's _high art_ ,” Max says mockingly, catching Jane's gaze so that she can see her eyeroll. Jane bites her lower lip to stem her smile, but it blossoms around her careful precaution anyway, as all of her reactions to Max seem to, and they grin at each other for a long moment. It feels like they're sharing a secret, somehow, even though they're in a very public food court surrounded by bustling crowds of patrons and Jane's co-workers, and Jane hopes against hope that her blush can be excused away by the heat of the grill as she forces her gaze away from Max's mischievous eyes and back down to the patty she's nudging.

“It _is_ high art,” Dustin says, materializing beside the grill out of nowhere with a bag of hamburger buns for Jane and a frown for Max. “Take away the stats and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Planeswalker illustration and an expensive oil painting. Jane's on my side, right Jane?” He elbows her playfully, hands busy with noisily rustling the plastic around the buns, and Jane smiles at him.

“Don't drag Jane down with you just because she's too nice to tell you that you're an idiot,” Max says, and Dustin laughs good-naturedly and nudges Jane with his elbow again. Jane knows they're joking, and although none of the group ever teases her the way they tease each other, with insults and glib retorts, little gestures like Dustin's friendly nudges make her feel like she's being included anyway. “Besides,” Max adds, and although Jane is watching her spatula carefully transfer one of her patties to a bun Dustin has finally wrestled free from the bag, Jane feels her bright blue eyes boring pointedly into the back of her sweaty neck. “Jane won't play Magic with me.”

Jane blushes and ducks her head. Max has been trying to convince Jane to visit her tabletop gaming store ever since they'd met a month ago when Max had come to visit Lucas at the fast food restaurant Jane and Lucas both worked at, and Jane still hasn't been able to force herself to go. She likes Max – too much, she thinks ruefully, as the skin on the back of her neck prickles under Max's unrelenting gaze – and she daydreams incessantly about spending time with her, real, uninterrupted time not invaded by customers and work duties and Max's breaks always ending all to soon, but the anxiety which grips her longing heart and closes around her throat like a vice whenever she tries to say _Yes_ always manages to win over the wanting urging her on. This had been the reason she'd gotten a job in the first place, instead of working at Benny's diner doing the same cooking under inarguably better conditions; her dads and her therapist had wanted her to meet people, kids her own age she'll need to get used to talking to before she starts school for the first time in the fall, and although Max and Lucas and Dustin have been nothing but friendly to her, she still finds herself shrinking away from the newness of it all, the thought of navigating through spending time with the prettiest girl she's ever seen too overwhelming when she needs to fall back onto routines just to get through her simple work shift.

_Nudge. Flip. Repeat._

“Maybe because you're going around calling everyone fake geeks,” Dustin points out cheerfully, and then cries out when Max reaches across the partition to punch him in the shoulder. “Shit, you're abusive. Who let you work with the public?”

“I'm not a work right now,” Max points out, and Jane's stomach lifts as weightlessly as her airborne burger at the mischievous grin in her voice. “In fact, _you're_ at work, so I think you should be little more careful about how you speak to your customers.”

“You never buy anything, so you're not technically our customer,” Dustin retorts. Jane's snort of amusement escapes before she can stop it, and the back of her neck heats up under the power of Max's stare suddenly snapping back to her, embarrassment only heightened by the guilty thrill she gets with Max's eyes focused on her.

“Et tu, Jane?” Max sighs dramatically, but when Jane glances up before she can think better of it in her panic Max is smiling. “This only proves you'd be the bomb at Magic, you know -” Her thought is interrupted by a musical trill of her phone, and she pulls it from her jeans pocket and taps the screen with a grimace. “Speaking of working, duty calls. My duty to let sad old men pay me to utterly destroy their overpriced, self-made decks. You guys working tomorrow?”

“Every day this week,” Dustin says with a dramatic groan. Jane smiles at him, sliding her finished patty onto an open bun on the counter when he forgets to hand it to her in his dismay.

“Jane?” Max presses.

The blush on her neck creeps up to warm her grease-splattered cheeks, but she forces herself to meet those sky-blue eyes. “Yes, I'm closing tomorrow,” she manages.

Max's eyes squint a little bit with her answering grin; Jane can only hope she doesn't look too foolish while she tries to remember how to breathe. “Awesome, I'll see you guys on my break again. Tell Lucas to text me when he's done with the line of customers, okay?”

“Will do,” Dustin says, thankfully, because Jane still hasn't managed to draw enough air into her aching lungs to speak. She tilts her head back towards the grill, but she allows herself a secret, indulgent moment to watch Max's sunset-red waves sway as she turns to weave through the crowd away from her, staring much longer than she ever dares when Max is looking at her.

It must not be as secret as she'd thought, because Dustin leans in to stage-whisper right into her ear, “She really means it, you know.”

Jane jumps, crushing half of the patty she'd been in the process of nudging dreamily. “Wh-What?”

“Max,” Dustin says, eyes twinkling merrily as she scrapes the ruined meat into the garbage from the grill almost as hot as her own blushing cheeks. “She really does want you to go down and hang out with her. She's just not particularly smooth, unlike yours truly. If you're not interested in learning Magic, there's plenty of other things she can show you.” He waggles his eyebrows.

“I don't know anything about gaming,” Jane says quietly, trying to keep the misery out of her voice. Max, Lucas and Dustin usually spent most of the all-too-brief moments Max visited their fast food restaurant talking so rapid-fire about their various gaming obsessions that Jane wouldn't have been able to keep up even if she'd known anything about the games they were talking about. In a certain way she likes watching them, the same way she enjoys watching the vintage soap operas no one besides her dads were ever allowed to know that she watched, but it cemented the inescapable chasm between their experiences that had always left her watching other people from the outside looking in, and even with the leaps and bounds she'd taken since moving in with Benny and Jim, she knew this was one separation she simply wasn't meant to cross.

_Don't look so far ahead; focus on what you can do right this second. What's the next step in the recipe?_

She startles a bit in surprise when Dustin laughs, loud and high-pitched and surprising considering he's always gone out of his way to not make fun of her for not knowing something. “Oh, Jane, you're my favorite,” he chuckles, but she doesn't have time to do more than frown at him before Lucas calls irritably from the cash register.

“Hey, Dustin, you feel like maybe doing something besides bothering the only employee besides me doing any work around here and help me with these orders?”

“Coming,” Dustin says in a sing-song voice. He winks at Jane and turns away, boisterous curls struggling to escape his hairnet, and Jane turns her frown towards the grill, watching the careful nudging of her spatula seriously even though she'd perfected the movements months before she'd started this job.

_Nudge. Flip. Repeat._

This is enough for one summer, she reminds herself, and she slides her burger carefully onto one of the buns Dustin had abandoned, determinedly ignoring the insistent pounding of her eternally-hopeful heart.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It's not until Will's voice breaks through her dense fog of concentration that Jane realizes how deeply she's sunk into it. “That looks really cool.”

Jane smiles at him. Will is a real artist, bringing a sketchbook of line-art masterpieces to their shared art therapy sessions from home that he bashfully lets her flip through with breathless awe only slightly tinged with jealousy, and she's always a little bit self-conscious working on anything in front of him. From their group therapy sessions he knows she never had the opportunity to draw or paint or do anything creative when she was a child in group homes or foster care, and he seems to have taken it upon himself to share his years of practice and free YouTube tutorials to help her create something that isn't such a childish mess she won't want to tear down in embarrassment every time she passes it where it's hung in its place of honour on the refrigerator at Jim's gruff insistence. She doesn't particularly feel like she's getting any better, especially next to Will's whimsical fantasy illustrations, but it at least makes art therapy more enjoyable than she'd feared her complete lack of skills would let it be, and she's grateful for Will's gentle, earnest encouragement more than her admittedly-limited vocabulary can express.

“Thank you,” she says, because Jim is always telling her to _Learn how to take a compliment, kid_ , and Will will only insist on it until she accepts, anyway. “Yours looks cool, too.”

Will laughs a bit, scratching the end of his nose shyly. “Well, I don't think 'cool' is the word for a D&D fanart, but I'll take it. Thanks.”

Jane wiggles the marker between her fingers anxiously as she drops her eyes to his sketchbook, worried she'd used the wrong word again. “D&D fanart isn't cool?”

“Most people wouldn't call it cool, no,” Will says with a smile in his voice. “I like it, though. I'm a big D&D nerd. Plus, it gives me an excuse to draw my boyfriend.”

Jane smiles, shoulders relaxing a bit at that; her friends at work make self-depreciating comments about being _nerd_ , too, which she didn't really understand but at least has figured out means they're teasing themselves and not her. “That is your boyfriend?”

“Yeah, the paladin,” Will says, tapping the figure in the center of his drawing. The paladin is taller than every other unfinished character around him, sharp jaw lifted regally as his shoulder-length dark curls flow with the wind, and even with her lack of artistic training Jane can tell that every sweeping line of his handsome face was drawn with utter reverence.

She grins, chest warming at how obvious his love for the other boy is. “Pretty. He must like it when you draw him.”

“Yeah, he's really supportive,” Will says, at bit dreamily, finger still lingering on the paladin's armor-clad chest. His cheeks heat up a bit when she looks up at him, and she can't help her quiet snicker when he takes his finger away from the picture and like it's burned him and shoves his hand beneath the table, although it's more from getting caught up in his second-hand giddiness than amusement. “I may be a little bit biased in who I usually end up drawing, out of the party,” he says sheepishly, but he returns her grin with a real one of his own. “It's just, usually he has to DM our games, since he's such a good writer, but now that Bob's our dungeon master and we all get to play together for once, it's really cool seeing him get into his paladin role.”

Something clicks in Jane's memory, and she brightens at the rush of recognizing a reference. “Dungeon master. My friends at work talk about that. D&D is also Magic: The Gathering?”

“No, but it's by the same company,” Will says, smiling encouragingly as she wilts at bit in disappointment. “A lot of people who play one play the other. Your work friends play, too? That's awesome, D&D's a bit retro so not a lot of kids our age play it.”

Jane smiles without meaning to. Max's beautiful face, shining with enthusiasm for whatever game she'd been talking about that Jane can't seem to follow no matter how hard she tries, has appeared, unbidden, in her mind's eye at the mention of her work friends, and she loses the thread of conversation for a dreamy moment under the power of it. Her vision fades after a toe-curling moment at the sound of Dr. Owens's jovial voice dismissing them, and she's the one with a sheepish expression on her blushing face this time as Will leans forward to start gathering his coloured pencils with a curious glance in her direction.

One of her favourite things about Will is that he doesn't ask questions she doesn't have the words to answer, though, and they tidy their spots in silence as chatter from the rest of the group starts to buzz around them. Will listens, eyes wide and patient even when she'd stuttered through the first few group sessions and other kids were shifting in their seats irritably, but he never presses, and this is the reason that he was the first person that she would ever call her _friend_ , the way she's coming to understand the word, anyway. She wishes real life were more like group therapy, sometimes, where she only has to talk when she wants to and the people around her are reminded by Dr. Owens that she's trying even when she doesn't know what to do, but Will always says he wishes everyone would treat him _normal_ , and she understands what he means in moments like this where just the memory of Max's beautiful, fearless smile steals her words for an entirely different reason than she's used to.

She holds the door to the reception area open for Will with one hand, her meagre attempt at art clutched in the other. Her dads always try to take turns picking her up from therapy or work, the only times she ever leaves the house without them, but with Jim's responsibilities as chief of police, and being _the only one who does any goddamn work around the station a_ s he says constantly, most days it ends up being Benny who is able to meet her. Art therapy on Tuesdays at five-three-zero were the only exception; Jim leaves the station early every week to stand far away from the other parents waiting in the lobby, let her pick the radio station in his police cruiser and tell her countless stories about people he's seen in his work as a police officer who got their hands _chopped off_ by passing cars when she tries to stick hers out the window to feel the sunshine, tell her _You did good, kid,_ after staring for a full, silent minute at her latest drawing no matter how much effort she'd put into it and then hanging it on the refrigerator over top of the previous one and acting surprised when the magnet isn't strong enough to hold two papers and it falls to the kitchen floor, making them both a triple-decker Eggo extravaganza and root beer floats for dinner, and letting her wiggle her cold toes under his legs as he takes twice as long as she would to set up the Roku to play the latest episode of Bold and Beautiful even though he hates soap operas. She likes art therapy, but the best part of Tuesdays is always five-three-zero because she knows her dad is making an effort, and even though she still gets that swoop of anxiety in the pit of her stomach when she walks out of the meeting room and expects him not to be there, his warm brown eyes are always there to meet hers.

He is there again today, hovering awkwardly by the potted plant near the reception desk and not-so-subtly trying to avoid eye contact with Will's chatty step-father, but his shoulders relax when he sees her and she feels herself exhale in response. Her mouth twitches upwards on one side at the sight, the familiarity of it flooding her with warmth as much as the sight of him itself, but she's distracted by a gentle bump to her shoulder and turns to see Will's gentle eyes. “I just sent you that podcast I was telling you about, let me know what you think,” he says quietly, and opens his arms.

Jane lights up, stepping into his embrace. She'd never been allowed to use the internet before she'd started living with Benny and Jim, and although they'd bought her a phone and computer they hardly understood how to use FaceTime, let alone navigate apps and social media, so, like most things in the real world, she'd had no idea where to start finding things that she would be interested in. Dustin had stolen her phone to download SnapChat and send her a picture that she hadn't really understood exactly once – Lucas had said it was a _dead meme_ and not even worth explaining with a long-suffering eyeroll – and she has a work group chat that she'd had to mute because the flood of notifications had given her a stomach ache, but for the first time in her life she had a whole world of information at her fingertips and she wanted to know everything she could about it. Will is good with computers, and seems to spend a lot of time online following subjects and communities she would never even think to look for, so every time he shares something with her that he thinks she might be interested in she devours it with sixteen years worth of hunger, absorbing every scrap of modern life that she can get from his seemingly-disjointed string of recommendations every week in art or group therapy.

Will gives her waist one last squeeze before he pulls away. Their therapy group is milling around them, kids huddled together in small clumps to gossip while their parents try to corner Dr. Owens for updates on their progression, and she crumples the paper in her now-sweaty hand a bit as she wades through the crush of bodies towards her dad. Thankfully he's towering over the crowd, big and imposing in his uniform and his hat tipped over his face, and she closes her eyes for a moment when she reaches him and he pulls her in for a quick one-armed hug.  
“Hi, kid,” he mumbles into her hair, and then steps back and thrusts his thumbs through his belt loops, grinning at her from beneath the rim of his hat. “You ready to rock and roll?”

Jane nods. With her dad's body between her and the crowd they get to the doors much more easily than she had alone, and they make it to the doors and out into the bright sunshine in half the time it took for her to cross the room. She lets herself tilt her face up towards the cloudless sky as she trails after her dad across the parking lot towards the police cruiser, basking in the warm sun on her face until the last second before she has to pull the car door closed behind her.

Ignoring her dad's eyeroll and mutter about _Kids today and their phones_ , she pulls her phone out of her pocket as they start to roll out of the parking lot. Dr. Owens doesn't allow them to use their phones during therapy, so she dutifully keeps hers on silent during their sessions, even though the person who texts her the most is Will and he can't use his phone during that time either. She'd opened it to find the podcast Will had sent her, in case it was something her dad might be interested in so that he wouldn't have to suffer through her pop music for the whole ride home, but when she taps her screen a thread of text from Dustin makes her heart skip a beat painfully in her chest instead.

  * _hey can i give max your snapchat?_




She feels her cheeks flush, and she glances guiltily at her dad next to her. There's nothing incriminating, or even secret, about the message, but the physical reaction she has just to reading Max's name makes her feel as if there is. She hunches a bit in her seat and opens the message, pulling her legs up to her chest, and she scrolls through the rest of his messages from behind her knees.

  * _she says she has something you HAVE to see_

  * _since you don't come to her store lmaoooo_

  * _but seriously i thot i should ask before giving away your private info_

  * _and make sure u didn't delete it since you never snap me just saying_




Jane chews her bottom lip, tapping the messages with the pad of her thumb as she reads them over again. She and Max haven't ever spoken outside of work or exchanged any contact information, and she'd never really thought anything of it, except for the weak moments when she watches Max walk away from visiting the restaurant and she starts missing her before she's even disappeared into the crowd. Seeing Max appear out of nowhere to tease the boys and flash her that smile like they're in on a joke together is the highest point of her shift, and a part of her was afraid that if she pushed that, if she started to depend on the thrill of Max brightening up her long, boring work day just by being a part of it, she might start to need more than cool, friendly Max can offer and lose her altogether. Losing is an inevitability, if her years in the foster system have taught her anything; the only thing she can control is how much she's willing to lose.

She thinks of the feeling she gets watching Max walk away from her every day, and she curls into herself and opens the messages.

  * _I deleted SnapChat from my phone. Sorry._



Her next inhale hurts her throat, like she's suddenly taken a deep breath of frigid winter air despite Jim's car's air conditioning being broken, and she shoves her phone into her pocket. Her eyes close when she feels it vibrate, and she jumps a bit at Jim's gruff voice. “You all right?”

She nods automatically, wrapping her arms around her bent knees so tightly her seatbelt digs painfully into her chest. Jim sighs, but his voice is gentle when he says, “You know you don't have to be all right if you're not, kid.”

She doesn't know that, not really, but she likes that he says it like it's a rule anyway. She stretches out her legs and sits up enough to put her head on Jim's shoulder, matching their breathing, and although he doesn't press her to say anything else for the rest of the car ride, he reaches out after a few, silent moments and turns the radio on to her favorite pop station.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to anyone who left kudos and comments on the first chapter, i hope you're still having as much fun with this as i am!!!<3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for panic attacks, past abuse, mention of animal abuse, and childhood trauma.  
> if anyone wants to try alternate nostril breathing here's a good video about what it actually is and more thorough instructions:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11qFpRqhIQ

_Everyone should use the abilities they were born with, Eleven. It appears you were born to hurt._

Her whole body jerks awake so suddenly that she's not sure whether it's the dream or deafening crash beside her which tears her forcefully out of sleep. Body pounding painfully with her own galloping heartbeat, she finds herself clinging to the side of the bed, hanging half off the edge of the mattress purely by instinct. Still half inside her dream, rigid body quivering as it battles its own conflicting instincts to flee as fast as she can and curl into herself for protection, it takes her a few, agonizing minutes to recognize the shattered pieces of her bedside lamp on the floor beneath her, but as soon as she does it takes no time at all for a vice to close around her lungs and crush the breath out of her.

_You did that_ , her panicking brain tells her, as if the thought isn't coming from herself at all. _You always destroy everything, and when Jim and Benny see it they're going to send you back and he's going to find you -_

She can hear her own wheezing breaths, aching lungs trying desperately to draw air underneath the crushing weight, and she tries to close her mouth to muffle the sound in the silent, dark room. She can't seem to make any muscle in her body move, though, and she shakes with pain and fury, hating herself as her mind somehow races with no thoughts at all.

“Jane? We heard a crash, are you all – Oh, shit. Benny!”

The shout makes her whole body shake, and a moan of pain is pulled from her constricted throat. She hears her dads shuffling and mumbling in the hallway, although the piercing ringing in her ears is so loud they could have been screaming, and hot tears pour pathetically down her clenched jaw as she feels the mattress sink when they both crawl over the bed to settle on either side of her, careful not to touch her.

“Hey, kid,” Jim says gruffly. “We're here, you're not alone. No one can hurt you.”

“We need you to breathe, all right?” Benny says. “Can you do that for us?”

Jane wheezes, shuddering with the effort to tell them that she's sorry, she would do anything for them but she can't breathe and it hurts so much -

“Can you move your hand, sweetheart?” Benny says gently. “We're not going to touch you.”

“Promise,” Jim says. “We're all going to do that breathing thing your doctor told us to, alternative nose – alternatively -”

“Alternate nostril breathing,” Benny says.

The name tugs at a memory in the back of her mind, and she remembers sitting in Doctor Owen's office the first time her parents had brought her to see him, watching out of the corner of her eye with amusement as Benny had purposefully made his nose whistle with every exhale to make her smile until mucus had shot out of his nostril when he'd blown too forcefully and she'd had to stop the breathing exercise because she'd been giggling too hard. The memory itself doesn't ease the sharp, oppressive pain in her chest, but it does remind her that she's felt the pain before and gotten through it with help, so she nods her head jerkily and focuses all of her energy on her hands clenched around the side of the bed. It takes several more, wheezing attempts at breaths, but she manages to shakily place one hand on the mattress beside her nose and one on her belly, and her dads don't move until she's ready.

“It's okay if your breaths are still short at first, we've got all night if you need it,” Jim says.

She makes a gulping sound in her throat like she's drowning, trying to unclench her jaw as she turns her hand and presses her thumb to her right nostril.

The breaths are searing at first, the weight on her lungs preventing her from drawing in air for more than seconds at a time before she's forced to switch nostrils, but the distraction of alternating her thumb and ring finger when her lungs fill painfully is enough to slowly soften her muscles and lower her aching shoulders. One inhale becomes another, and eventually it's only her wrist that's aching from tilting back and forth with each breath as she greedily draws air into her lungs so deeply her stomach balloons beneath her other hand.

“Let's all try and match our breathing, okay?” Benny says in a low voice.

The sound of their breaths, slow and exaggerated in the still room to let her follow them, is just as comforting as the breathing exercise itself, and she lets herself bask in it for a few, selfish moments, sore muscles melting so much that she sinks into the bed on her back. Benny looks down at her and flares his open nostril, snorting grotesquely, and she drops the hand on her nose to cover her giggles.

“Oh, yeah, that never gets old,” Jim says sarcastically, but he's smiling. He offers her his hand, and she takes it, body shaking a bit with the effort as he helps her upright and she tucks her legs beneath her. Her head is aching and heavy, like she's recovering from the flu, and she leans it on Jim's shoulder, eyes drooping with exhaustion as Benny shuffles closer and runs a comforting hand over her sweaty curls.

“So,” Benny says, “you want to tell us what brought that on?”

Jane winces, burrowing into Jim's arm. Her dads exchange a glance over her head, and then Benny says, “All right, let's start with the easy stuff. Was the lamp broken before or during your attack?”

Jane's stomach twists anxiously. “I'm sorry,” she says, voice rough with disuse. “I didn't mean to. I'll – I'll pay you back with my wages.”

“You don't have to pay us back for anything, kid,” Jim says, eyebrows furrowing as he looks down at her. “We know you didn't mean to break it. We're your parents, it's our job to buy you stuff, not the other way around.”

“You're not in trouble,” Benny says. “We just want to understand what's going on with you.”

Jane stares at him, eyes wide. “You're not mad?” she says breathlessly.

“No, we're not mad,” Benny smiles. “We do want to know if you hurt yourself when the lamp broke, though.”

Jane lifts her arms to inspect them in the moonlight; she hadn't even thought to look for injuries. “No. I don't remember doing it. I think I was asleep.”

“You were sleep-walking?” Jim says.

She shakes her head slowly against his arm. “No. Sometimes when I have a nightmare, I...” She can't think of the proper word, so she wriggles around on the bed a bit.

“Thrash in your sleep?” Benny says, and she shrugs. “That's pretty common for nightmares. Maybe we can bolt the new lamp to your bedside table, so you can't knock it off next time.”

“Then she could break her hand,” Jim points out. “Why don't we get a standing lamp, and put it on the other side of the table? Then she can't reach it.”

“That's an idea,” Benny says, and then looks back at Jane, who had been looking back and forth between her fathers like she was watching a tennis match. “So. More importantly. You had a nightmare.”

Jane shrinks back against Jim's arm, but she bites her lip thoughtfully; they had promised that they weren't mad, and they had never broken a promise to her so far. Besides, her earlier fear that they would send her back to social services seems far away now, pressed between both of her dads with their breaths still matching seemingly unconsciously in the room they'd let her design and redesign as many times as she'd liked since she'd moved in no matter how childish or tacky it was, so she sighs and nods. “Yes. I think that's what triggered my panic attack, because it was about... Papa.”

She feels Jim tense against her, and she freezes in response, but Benny reaches out and takes her hand on the mattress beside her, and she relaxes infinitesimally. “I can definitely see how that would give you a panic attack. Do you want to tell us what happened in the nightmare?”

Jane squirms, but presses on, “He... The one about the cat. He said that I was born to hurt.”

Jim mutters something which sounds suspiciously like “That son of a bitch,” under his breath, but Benny squeezes her hand and prompts her, “But we know that's not right. What do you say when Papa's words get too loud in your head?”

Jane tries to repeat the phrase exactly the way Dr. Owens had taught her. “We choose our own narrative.”

“Yeah, you got it, kid,” Jim says gruffly, and Jane turns to smile proudly at him. “You get to choose who you are and how you think of yourself from now on.”

“And, if you keep working as hard as you are at everything Dr. Owens throws at you, eventually Papa's narrative in your head will be over-written by your own, and you won't have to listen to him any more,” Benny says.

Jane turns her smile towards him. “Hey, now, smile looks good on you,” he says, and she grins as he reaches out to ruffle her hair; he'd made that joke the first time he'd finally managed to make her smile after days of her being too anxious around them to say more than a few words, and he still loves bringing it up, even though he now makes her smile every day. “You think you could sleep now?”

Jane shrugs. Her stomach twists at the memory of her nightmare, but between the panic attack and calming breathing exercises her body is so tired Jim is supporting most of her weight as she leans against him. Her eyes droop, and Benny chuckles as he drags himself across her bed to let her crawl back towards her pillow.

“Well, before we do anything, we've got to get that former lamp cleaned up,” Benny points out. Jane pauses in the midst of snuggling into her pillow, but Benny waves a hand at her, pushing himself off of the opposite edge of the bed. “Your dad and I will take care of it. You do your breathing, and get as much rest as you can.”

Jane smiles at his back as he marches out of the room. Jim squeezes her foot beneath the blanket, and she twists to look down at him where he's still sitting at the foot of her bed.

“You know that's horseshit, right?” Jim says.

Jane raises her head from her pillow, frowning in confusion. “Horseshit?”

“What that bastard told you,” Jim says. He's obviously trying to keep his voice under control, but his jaw is clenched so tightly she can see it working in the moonlight. “About being meant to hurt people. You're a good kid, and the things he made you do aren't your fault. You've only made us happy since we got to bring you home, never hurt.”

Jane's cheeks heat up, happiness spreading through her body like hot soup on a cold day. “Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Jim says. He raises his eyebrows. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jane beams. He squeezes her foot again and shoves himself off the bed, stomping out of the room towards the clatter of Benny presumably looking for a broom.

Jane squirms happily, burying her face in her pillow. She lets herself drift as she listens to their voices murmur down the hall, sinking into sleep as comfortably as she sinks into her mattress. _If I can choose my own narrative_ , she practices saying to Dr. Owen in her head, _this is the one I want to choose._

Smiling blue eyes and fiery red hair swim behind her closed eyelids, and her stomach clenches automatically. Her lungs ache with the echo of the pain she'd felt at the idea of her dads leaving her behind, and she curls into herself at the mere thought of how it would feel to lose Max when the other girl found out who she really was. She believes Dr. Owens and her dads when they say that she can choose her own narrative, but deep down in the shadowy corners of her mind, so secret even her dads don't know about it, she knows that she'll never be fully rid of Papa's words in her head, because he had seen a part of her that no one else in this impossibly good new life seemed to, and although she was working hard to choose a narrative that didn't include what Papa had wanted for her, she sometimes wasn't sure where his words stopped and her own thoughts began.

Still, as she falls asleep to the sounds of her parents sweeping up her broken lamp as quietly as possible, she thinks of mischievous eyes as blue as the ocean, and she doesn't have any more nightmares that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anybody else miss max in this elmax fic??? this not-fun chapter was mostly to set up the "choose your own narrative" idea which will be important to the romance part so bear with me!!!


	4. Chapter 4

Arms spread wide, Dustin weaves around her scattered bags of garbage like he's at the obstacle course she'd seen on a reality television show with Benny once. “And then Falcon swoops in like a motherfucking _badass_ and takes out three guys at once!”

Jane giggles, watching him out of the corner of her eye as she ties the last garbage bag securely. He's acting out whatever comic book he'd last read for her to rectify the apparent indignity of her not knowing who the _Avengers_ were instead of helping her close the restaurant, but his enthusiasm is so earnest she doesn't mind. “Falcon is a person?” she asks, lifting her bag onto the platform cart carefully.

“Yeah, he has the power to telepathically communicate with birds,” Dustin says cheerfully, dragging the two garbage bags furthest from the cart across the floor towards her. “And he has these awesome mechanical wings so that he can fly around kicking bad-guy butt. I don't get why they don't let him do as much in the movies, he has one of the coolest powers out of the Avengers. I mean, how awesome are _mind powers_?”

Jane shrugs, pressing the sole of her converse sneaker against the front wheel of the cart so that it doesn't roll into Dustin as she swings the next bag onto the platform. “I guess.”

“Not awesome enough to win over the fair lady Jane,” Dustin teases, and she smiles at him a bit apologetically as he hauls both bags of garbage that he'd been dragging onto the cart at once. “Don't worry, we'll find something that will make your transformation into nerdy – eugh, garbage juice!”

Jane grins, pulling one of his bags back onto the platform from where it was precariously close to slipping over the edge while he dances away, trying to shake the leaking liquid off of his sneaker frantically. “Are you okay?” she asks, even though she probably has more _garbage juice_ on her work pants from cleaning the restaurant than he had just been sprayed with.

“Now I can never wear these sneakers again,” Dustin complains, bending one knee to lift his shoe and inspect it with distress. “This had better not stain. My mom's going to _murder_ me if I ruined these, she bought me them from am orthotics place through her insurance to get me optimal arch support because I showed her a bunch of articles about how standing for long periods of time can affect spine health to try to get out of getting a job this summer.”

Jane blinks; sometimes Dustin enthusiastically packs so much information into one sentence that she gets lost trying to follow his points. “Your mom will hurt you over shoes?” she says. Her mind flashes to Papa's reaction when she had accidentally loosened an eye on the one teddy bear he had allowed her while playing, and she immediately reaches for her phone in her pocket to call Jim.

“Well, not actually,” Dustin says cheerfully, and Jane's fingers pause over her phone case, relieved. “It's an exaggeration for emphasis, I just meant she's going to be pissed.”

“Oh,” Jane smiles. “One of my dads is a chef. He washes his chef clothes separately and he puts white vinegar and baking soda in to get out the stains and smell.”

“Shit, thanks, Jane, you're a life-saver,” Dustin beams, and even though he had told her that his life wasn't in danger, Jane lets herself glow with pride, just a bit. “Ultimately, this job is disgusting, so this probably won't be the last time something gets doused in garbage juice, huh?”

Jane giggles, lifting the last garbage bag onto the cart. “Less disgusting than _avenging_ ,” she points out.

“Hey, that's true, I bet the Avengers come home from work covered in worse than garbage juice,” Dustin says enthusiastically. “I bet Mom would see the logic in that. Although their costumes have super technologically-advanced material, I bet blood and guts just get slicked right off them like sweat.”

Jane wrinkles her nose. “Blood and guts?”

“All part of saving the world,” Dustin says. “Just like garbage juice is part of this job, I guess, even if our uniform seems woefully unprepared for dealing with the fallout. Not exactly a super-suit.” He looks down at his still-dripping shoes sadly.

Jane smiles at him fondly. “I can take the garbage down for disposal by myself if you want.”

Dustin lights up. “Really? You're the best, Jane, seriously, you just keep saving my life. I can do all the rest of the closing and set the alarm, you don't even have to come back up. I'm already late to meet everybody at the arcade downstairs, anyway, and Lucas is always bragging about how much faster he is at closing than I am and tries to give me tips, which are always annoying and, quite frankly, insulting. Hey, want to meet us at the arcade after you're done, too? You haven't been yet, right? It's really cool, and we'll have a few hours to beat the high scores Max set while we were still working before they kick us out to start serving alcohol.”

Jane ducks her head and pretends to be very focused on the cart she's carefully attempting to aim for the back door so that he doesn't see her blush at Max's name. “My dad's already waiting to pick me up.”

“Ugh, too bad,” Dustin complains, already backing up towards the counter. “We'll get you into our nerdy little web yet, Jane Hopper-Hammond. Check your phone once in awhile!”

“Okay,” Jane smiles at him over her shoulder, pushing the rattling cart away from him towards the back of the store. “Good night, Dustin.”

“See you tomorrow!” he shouts, and she hears the beeping of him starting to set the alarm as she nudges the door open with her foot.

She maneuvers the cart through the doorway into the back hallway with some difficulty. There are several more doors and an elevator she will have to manage to get to the waste disposal room, one of the reasons this task is supposed to be a two-person job, but she doesn't mind; the long, empty hallways are quiet, and she likes being alone with her thoughts for a moment after spending all day working with customers and overly-friendly Dustin. The only sound echoing through the winding halls is the squeak of her cart's wheels, and she takes a deep breath, only belatedly remembering that she's standing over a day's worth of fast-food garbage.

She's scrunching up her face and smacking her lips to get the taste out of her mouth when she rounds a corner and almost runs into someone. “Oh, Jesus! Sorry,” a familiar voice laughs, and her heart seizes in her chest and then starts thumping so forcefully she can feel the tremors through her whole body even before she reluctantly turns to see Max's surprised grin. “Jane, hey.”

“Hi,” Jane says. She can feel herself smiling too widely, but she can't seem to remember how to stop, even as embarrassment sets her strained cheeks aflame.

“I didn't think anyone was down here,” Max says, falling into step with her. She's carrying a bulging bag of recycling in each hand, and Jane is suddenly aware, much more than when she was laughing at Dustin, how much she must smell like grease and old food. _Eugh, garbage juice!_ She forces herself to angle her cart slightly further away from the other girl as subtly as possible. “It's super creepy in this maze of empty hallways at night, huh?” Max continues, seemingly oblivious to Jane's inner turmoil. “I keep half-expecting to see, like, zombies or something every time I round a corner.”

Jane laughs. When she's with Max everything seems amplified, her laughter too loud, her smile too big, her heartbeat too fast. She's too aware of her body, how awkward her shoulders are when she walks and how much space she takes up in the hallway and how _close_ her space feels to Max's space no matter how much distance she tries to put between them. Her hands slip over the handle of the platform cart in a humiliating split-second as she forgets about pushing in her desperation to cover her undoubtedly-weird grin.

Even though she's trying to keep her gaze carefully on the cart she's pushing, she still catches Max's ocean-blue eyes dart to her for a split-second when she laughs out of the corner of her eye. “Although I guess you'd think I'd be more aware of my surroundings and not run into innocent fast-food workers if I was expecting the zombie apocalypse,” Max adds quickly, bending one arm to nudge Jane's elbow with hers. “I never thought I'd be one of those idiots I always make fun of in horror movies.”

Jane laughs again, tingles spreading from her elbow up her arm and over her whole body at Max's innocent touch. Max is always funny, but she's not sure whether her own slightly-hysterical laughter is from her joke or the giddiness ballooning in her stomach because she can feel Max's captivating ocean gaze focused on her now and she's not looking away this time. “I think you'd be good in a zombie apocalypse,” she offers with a smile, and then blushes.

Max grins, the sides of her eyes crinkling a bit with the force of it. She starts to lift one hand towards her flowing red hair, and then seems to remember the bag in her hand and drops it quickly. The faint spattering of freckles on the apples of her cheeks contrasts stunningly with her bright blush, and Jane only realizes she's staring when Max shakes her silky curtain of hair over her face and jogs forward to jam her thumb against the button for the elevator Jane had been too distracted to notice that they'd reached. “Yeah, you're right, I'd kick ass at fighting zombies. I'd probably have to spend the whole time protecting our idiot friends, though, we definitely didn't pick the right group for survival. They'd be all, 'I got brains all over my white sneakers, I wanted life to be like a video game but not like thi-i-i-i-i-isss.” She wails the last word, face sagging exaggeratedly like she's weeping as she drops one of her bags beside the elevator doors to press the back of her hand against her forehead.

Jane hurriedly uses the cover of the elevator doors opening to avoid looking directly at her in favour of pushing her cart into the elevator, hoping the squeaky wheels and groaning metal are noisy enough to distract from how high-pitched her laughter is. Somehow, Max is just as breath-takingly beautiful when she's scrunching up her face mockingly as she is smiling, and Jane knows her face will not do the same as she attempts the impossible task of catching her breath in Max's presence. Max's comment about sneakers reminds her of Dustin's dismay over his orthotic shoes, and although she usually doesn't join in on her friends's teasing, she can't resist sharing something that might make Max laugh for once, instead of the other way around. “Dustin did that, today, but with garbage instead of brains.”

Max does laugh, and Jane suspects the swooping in her stomach is more from the sound than the elevator's descent. “Oh my god, seriously? You can't even make jokes about these losers, they're already so much more ridiculous than – wait, Dustin was closing with you, right? Did he ditch you so you had to take the garbage down yourself to keep his precious shoes clean?”

“Not ditch,” Jane explains, daring to glance at her just long enough to show her she's smiling as the elevator doors open. “I offered.”

“Of course you did, that doesn't mean he has to take you up on it,” Max complains, following Jane out of the elevator into the hallway. “I swear, he'll stay up all night building gadgets no one is ever going to use, but try to get him to do some normal, non-mad scientist work and suddenly he's useless.”

Jane giggles, slowing her steps as she reaches the doorway to the waste disposal room to give herself time to try to figure out how to open it without losing control of her cart. “He said that... You were all meeting at the arcade. And he had to go and beat your high scores.” She glances over her shoulder a bit curiously.

Max rolls her eyes as she drops both bags of recycling and starts edging sideways around Jane's cart. “So he makes you do his job so he can go play video games a little bit earlier? Like he's ever going to beat my high scores, anyway.” She opens the door to the waste disposal room and steps out of the way with a little smile for Jane despite her irritable words, and Jane has to duck her head to watch her steps carefully as she starts pushing the cart through the doorway. “I was there with Lucas this afternoon, I just worked a short closing shift. Lucas is waiting for us there, but even four hours later I know he hasn't beat my scores, either. It's cute that they still try so hard, though.”

Jane laughs, parking the cart parallel to the dumpster. The disposal room has a garage door to the outside parking lot, presumably because the mall accumulates enough garbage even just from the food court to fill an entire garbage truck every week, and she's grateful for the summer night breeze on her warm cheeks. “You are always competing,” she smiles.

“Yeah, though it's not much a competition, obviously,” Max jokes. She marches around the cart and heaves one of the garbage bags into the dumpster without hesitation, and Jane smiles at her gratefully as she lifts the bag in her own arms. “Um, it doesn't always have to be a competition, though – I mean, me and the guys have friendly rivalries in all of our games, because we've been playing forever, but we're ultimately playing for fun, so if you wanted to come, we could just, like, try out some games, and stuff. It's fun playing together, too. When we're done here you should come by. With me.” Her grin flashes in the moonlight, regretfully obscured by her whirlwind of hair when she turns away quickly to hoist another bag into the dumpster.

Jane hesitates as she picks up the next bag; she'd already turned down the same invitation from Dustin, but it's difficult to remember why she would ever say _no_ in Max's enthralling presence, and she takes a moment to ground herself as she tosses her garbage, mind blanking except for Max's voice echoes in her head. _With me._ Just her giddy reaction to the idea is enough of a reminder of why she could never go, though, and Max will never mean it the way she truly wants her to, no matter how much her warm smile makes her feel like she could when it's focused on her. The thought is sobering enough to bring her back to herself, and she shakes her head reluctantly, avoiding Max's piercing blue eyes as she reaches for the next bag. “I can't. My dad is here to pick me up. Dustin already asked.”

“Oh,” Max sighs, face is still hidden behind her curtain of fiery hair as she dumps two bags into the container at the same time. Jane pauses, cold panic gripping her stomach at the thought that she'd finally insulted Max enough that she would stop asking to see her, despite this being the inevitable consequence to her behaviour and should really be what she was hoping for instead of fearing, but when Max turns back towards her she has a mischievous grin on her face, and Jane's muscles relax with relief so suddenly she has to drop the bag she's holding back onto the platform for a moment. “Too bad, it would've been fun to team up and do a girls-versus-boys night, especially after Dustin stuck you with garbage duty,” Max says conspiratorially, and Jane laughs a bit shakily, longing squeezing the air from her lungs. “Next time. There's always the zombie apocalypse for us to hang out, right?” She holds out her fist with an easy grin.

Jane has seen Lucas and Dustin _fistbump_ countless times at work, so she does her best to mimic what they do. Max spreads her fingers and makes a static-y noise in the back of her throat, and it's more the laughter sparkling in her blue eyes like sunlight on water which makes her giggles bubble up irresistibly in her throat than the gesture itself, but Max waggles both her eyebrows and her fingers so she can't really regret the embarrassing sound.

The door to the mall opens, and two middle-aged women roll in carts of garbage one after the other, chatting merrily. Jane and Max both start and take a step away from each other, as if they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't even though they were both mall employees who were allowed to be in the waste disposal room, and Jane barely catches herself before she presses her sticky hands to her blushing cheeks. She loves cooking more than almost anything she's ever tried, but just once, she wishes Max would see her not covered in some kind of unflattering byproduct of her job.

Max, apparently unconcerned, shoves her hands into her jeans pockets and smiles at her. “Um, well, knowing how Dustin is, if he had stayed and helped you like he was supposed to you would be here until midnight, so hopefully this saved your dad some time, if he's already here waiting for you, anyway.” She winks.

Jane takes a step backwards without meaning to, knees shaking a bit; she can't make herself look away from Max's eyes, even as she feels her face stretch with her foolish grin again. “Yes. Thank you for helping me.”

“Any time,” Max says. Her grin is as wide as Jane's feels, and she backs away a few steps, too, although the door back to the mall is to her right. “Someone's got to, right? Since we know it's apparently not going to be the guys.”

Jane laughs, too loudly, more stumbling than stepping backwards now. “Yes.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees, despite Jane not really adding anything to what she'd said, still grinning so wide she can barely form the words. “Cool.”

“Cool,” Jane echoes. Her therapist often tells her that her _instincts could be lying_ to her, that her racing pulse and jumbled thoughts are her body's learned reactions to her old situation and don't necessarily mean she's in any immediate danger now in her blissfully-mundane life, but she feels, smile uncontrollable and hopeless heart pounds deafeningly in her ears as she and Max keep steady, unbroken eye contact, that her instincts might still be useful at recognizing danger. “Thank you,” she adds, even though she's said it already.

“Any time,” Max says, even though she's said that already, too. She kicks a stack of flattened cardboard boxes with her next reluctant step backwards, but she still doesn't look away from Jane. “I'll see you tomorrow, right? At the restaurant?”

“Yes,” Jane says, a thrill running through her chest down to the pit of her stomach at the thought of it. “Tomorrow.”

“Cool,” Max says, again. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Jane grins. She's on the threshold of the garage door, but she still can't seem to look away from Max's intense, smiling eyes. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Max says, although she's now standing perfectly still and looks less like she's saying goodbye than she had when she'd been backing away.

“Bye,” Jane repeats, and then ducks her head and turns to slip through the doorway into the parking lot before she can do anything else stupid.

Benny is grinning almost as wide as she is as he watches her climb into the car. “And who was that?”

Jane flushes hotly; even though they'd been standing in front of the garage door, she'd forgotten that Benny, and everyone else in the parking lot, could see her embarrassing interaction with Max. She'd forgotten almost everything else under the power of Max's smile, without the predictable, soothing routine of grilling that she usually had to focus on during their disorienting conversations. She realizes, with a jolt in her stomach like a magnet jerking her off-balance, that this is the first time she'd ever really been alone with Max, outside of the context of her job where there is a counter dividing them and an inevitable end to their time together, and all of the residual heat in her body from Max's presence seems to move to her cheeks with the guilty thrill at the thought. “No one,” she manages.

“Uh huh,” Benny says doubtfully, watching her out of the corner of his eye with amusement as he leans forward to turn the key in the ignition. “Didn't look like no one.”

Jane glances away quickly, heart thumping painfully in her chest. _Your instincts could be lying to you._ She was always safe with Benny. “Max,” she ventures. “She works in the mall.”

“I see,” Benny says, keeping his eyes dutifully out the windshield even as his expression shifts into what Jim calls his _shit-eating grin._ “Max, huh? She work at your restaurant?”

“No,” Jane says, squirming a bit in her seat. “A – a game store.”

“A game store,” Benny repeats thoughtfully. “She a regular at your place? That how you know her?”

“Yes,” Jane smiles, and then pauses thoughtfully; even though Max visits them almost every day, she hardly ever orders any food, so she's not sure if Max can be considered a _regular_ in the way Benny has regular customers who eat at his restaurant every day.

Benny glances at her with warm eyes, leaning back in his seat as they exit the parking lot to pause at a stoplight. “You know, your dad used to come into my place every day,” he says eventually.

Jane looks over at him, distracted from her embarrassment by curiosity; her dads tell wildly different stories of how they fell in love, and she's still trying to piece together the truth from the fragments she gets from them. “He did?”

“Yeah,” Benny smiles, eyes soft as he eases the car forward into traffic. “Lunch and dinner, sometimes. Best part of my day, seeing him plant himself at the same table even if it wasn't cleared and pick up a menu like he wasn't there more than most of my wait staff and didn't know exactly what we served.”

Jane giggles, twisting in her seat to look at him. “The best?”

“Yeah, but don't go telling him that,” Benny says with a wink, and Jane laughs, belatedly remembering her hand is covered in _garbage juice_ when she lifts it to cover her smile. “My point is, he made that effort to come in and see me every day. That was his way of getting the ball rolling.”

“The ball rolling?” Jane repeats in confusion.

“Yeah,” Benny says, tilting his head thoughtfully. “Getting the ball rolling, you know, like starting something, getting momentum going. So I had to meet him halfway.”

“By cooking for him?” Jane says, repeating the new phrase over and over in her mind so that she remembers it. Jim always says he _got fat eating greasy food every day before Benny finally noticed what I was there to do and then never lost the weight since I started getting the food for free_ , so this must be another real piece of their story that they agree on.

Benny chuckles. “Well, sure, but I would have done that anyway. I made sure that he knew that he wasn't just another customer, and I ended up being the one to ask him on a date, since I saw that he'd made the first effort to find out if I felt the same way about him. So I met him halfway. Right?”

“Right,” Jane agrees, a bit confused as to why he was asking her, since she hadn't been there. “Halfway happy?”

Benny smiles warmly at the phrase. Jim always tried to break down words she didn't know into phrases she could remember, and their whole family had started adopting his explanations into their vocabulary instead of using the word he was describing, like their own secret language. _C-O-M-promise. Compromise. Halfway happy_. “Kind of,” Benny answers her, taking one hand off of the steering wheel to squeeze her knee. “But this way, you meet them halfway, they meet you halfway, and you get to be all the way happy.”

Jane's stomach glows. Blushing cheeks aching from all of the smiling she's done today, she puts one of her hands on top of her dad's and squeezes back; although she's never sure what prompts the tantalizing glimpses into her dads's pasts, she's certain she understands how his new phrase feels. _All the way happy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, i'm sure that's exactly what benny meant for you to take away from that jane. nailed it  
> I really hope everyone is staying safe and taking care of themselves right now!!! chag Pesach samech and happy easter, i love you!!!<3

**Author's Note:**

> sorry to anyone who actually knows anything about mtg aflshjfshlj;hg i did a bunch of research for this i swear!!!  
> happy summer holidays elmax fandom!!! one summer can change everything,,,, this probably isn't going to be too long but i'm having a lot of fun with it so it's probably going to be my summer project, just in case it isn't clear they all work in a mall and max, lucas and dustin were friends before and kind of adopted jane, but you'll find out more about their friendship in later chapters. my gf worked in a mall last summer and people from all different stores and restaurants were friends and gave each other discounts!!! she didn't fall in love with any of them tho luckily for me<3


End file.
